Where were you when you heard Bill Shankly was quitting? They still ask old-timers that question sometimes on Merseyside. They still show the footage of Tony Wilson speaking to kids on a street corner near St George’s Hall, telling them the news live on Granada Reports, the camera picking out the bewilderment on their young faces.
There is something haunting about the footage of Kenny Dalglish, hollow-eyed, staring at the floor, when it was announced at a press conference in 1991 that he had resigned as Liverpool manager. Jurgen Klopp spoke into a camera at the club’s training ground to break the news of his departure. There was blank shock at that, too.
Liverpool, a city that sees itself as outsiders, forced to the margins by the establishment, holds its heroes close and so their leaving has become a thing of ritual and of sadness and of gratitude, too. And that is the way it will be with Mohamed Salah, now and when he leaves the club at the end of this season.
Salah’s announcement came in a two-minute video that started against the soundtrack of a commentary describing one of his 255 goals for the club, a tally that puts him third in the club’s all-time list, behind only Ian Rush and Roger Hunt. If Dalglish was, and always will be, The King, on Merseyside, Salah will always be the Egyptian King.
If there will be sadness at the news of his departure, there is less shock. There has been a temptation for some Liverpool fans and analysts to talk about him in the past tense for swathes of this season because he has not seemed like the player he was. He has suffered in the transition that has followed the departure of Klopp, and which has accelerated this season. It feels as if he is choosing the right time to go.
Some have felt that the announcement had been coming. Salah walked into shot, holding a mug in one hand. He set it down on the floor, sat down and let out a sigh. ‘Hello, everyone,’ he said, as he began to talk about the imminent end of his nine-year reign at Anfield, ‘unfortunately, the day has come.’
Mohamed Salah will leave Liverpool as a cast-iron legend but his announcement came not with shock, only sadness
The 33-year-old has been choosing his moment to bow out following the departure in 2024 of formative manager Jurgen Klopp
The day always comes, however great you have been. It came for Dalglish, the player, it came for Steven Gerrard, it came for Graeme Souness, for Alan Hansen and Phil Thompson. Salah’s name deserves to be mentioned alongside all of those Liverpool legends. He belongs with them.
Comparisons are difficult across different eras but most will put Salah in their top five Liverpool players of all time. And for the most successful club in this country, that is a high bar indeed.
But Salah has ticked all the boxes he needed to tick to be admitted to that pantheon. He has achieved all manner of individual accolades and Golden Boots and Player of the Year awards but it was the medals he won with his team that elevated him.
Any Liverpool player who has aspirations to be remembered among the best of the best needs to have either a European Cup or a Champions League winner’s medal in their trophy cabinet. Salah did that. He scored in the 2019 final, too, the penalty that put Liverpool 1-0 up against Spurs in Madrid in the second minute.
He won the Premier League with Liverpool twice, too, in 2019-20 and 2024-25, and he will always be remembered as one of the greatest players of the Jurgen Klopp era. His impending departure will mark the loss of one of the last links to the German’s gilded time at Anfield. Only Alisson and Virgil van Dijk, of the star players, remain now.
Salah has been an individualist but he was also part of one of the greatest front lines that ever graced English football. Liverpool once had Toshack and Keegan, and Dalglish and Rush. Manchester United had Best, Law and Charlton. They had Cole and Yorke.
And Liverpool had Salah, Sadio Mane and Roberto Firmino. What a magical trio that was, three players who complemented each other perfectly. Firmino was the facilitator, the wonderfully clever player who dropped off and found space and knew instinctively how to find his quicksilver foils.
And Mane and Salah tore opposition defences to pieces. Salah had pace to burn, his close control was mesmerising, his finishing was clinical and beautiful. Salah had a template but no matter how many times he observed it, defenders were powerless to stop it.
Salah will be remembered as one of his club’s – and the Premier League’s – greatest players
Alongside Sadio Mane and Roberto Firmino, he formed a formidable attacking trio under Klopp
He’d get the ball on the right and he’d square up a hapless left back. He’d cut inside and maybe he’d beat another man for good luck. And then he would let fly with a shot that would hurtle across the goalkeeper and into the top corner of the net.
If there could only be one moment to remember Mo Salah in a Liverpool shirt, it would be a burst of genius he produced against Manchester City in October 2021. It would have to be against City. The battles against them defined him and Liverpool.
It came in the 76th minute of a league game at Anfield. Curtis Jones played the ball into him even though he was tightly marked by Joao Cancelo. Salah slipped away from Cancelo as if by magic. Bernardo Silva tried to tackle him but Salah beat him with a bewitching drag-back turn that sat him down on his backside.
Aymeric Laporte came at him next but Salah turned him inside out. He still had Ederson to beat and he was on his weaker right foot but he drove the ball across him and into the far corner of the net. It was a goal of genius. There is no other word for it.
There were times in those Liverpool years when Salah touched the rare heights that only Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo have touched in modern times. There were times when he was unstoppable. There were times when it was unarguable that he was the greatest talent in the Premier League.
He has certainly been the greatest talent from Africa ever to grace the English game and if there is a surprise, it is that he has not won more individual honours on the world stage. Like many other greats, it was his misfortune to play in the era of Messi and Ronaldo in that regard.
It was, Salah said, the first stage of his farewell. There will be more tributes and a host of ceremonies to mark his departure. There will be speculation, too, about who Liverpool will buy to replace him.
One answer to that is that it may be that they bought the replacement before Salah left and that Alexander Isak, when he is fit, will step into his role. A different answer is that it will be an awful lot harder than that to replace the Egyptian King.
